Maldunas Named to NABC Honors Court

Courtesy: Dartmouth

Release: 07/22/2014

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HANOVER, N.H. — The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) announced on Monday the 2013-14 NABC Honors Court, recognizing those men’s collegiate basketball student-athletes who excelled in academics during the past season. Dartmouth rising senior Gabas Maldunas was among the record number of 895 student-athletes to earn the distinction across the three NCAA Divisions and two NAIA Divisions.

In order to be named to the Honors Court, the student-athlete must be a junior or senior academically with a minimum 3.2 cumulative grade point average at the conclusion of the 2013-14 academic year. Among the other Ivy League schools, only Harvard and Yale had at least one player recognized by the NABC for this distinction.

An economics major from Panevezys, Lithuania, Maldunas had his junior season cut short by a knee injury, forcing him to miss all but one Ivy League game. The 6-9, 230-pound center was one of the country’s most efficient rebounders, hauling in 8.5 boards a game in his 15 games, and was leading the nation in defensive rebounding percentage (.323) in mid-January shortly before suffering his injury. At the offensive end, he averaged 11.2 points per game while shooting at a 52.5 percent clip when he was sidelined, and his 30 blocked shots were the most by a Dartmouth player despite barely playing in half of the Big Green’s games. In his only game against an Ivy opponent, he single-handedly kept Dartmouth in the contest at the eventual league champion, Harvard, scoring 23 of his squad’s 45 points to go along with six rebounds and three assists.